The UK Jurisdiction Taskforce (UKJT) has published its Legal Statement on Liability for AI Harms, setting out its views on when, and on what legal bases, English common law will impose liability for loss that results from the use of AI.

The Statement follows a consultation on the subject launched earlier this year. As we discussed at the time (see here), the UKJT sought to respond to what it described as “genuine market uncertainty about how and when developers of AI tools and those that utilise them might incur legal liability when things go wrong”. Importantly, however, it made clear that much of its discussion would be limited to the law of negligence, addressing how duties of care are likely to arise, their scope, the standards that courts are likely to apply to various parties, and how principles of causation can apply in the context of autonomous and opaque systems.

If there is one overriding impression left after reading the Statement, it is that the authors are clearly of the view that English law is largely well-equipped to respond to the many novel factual scenarios that will be thrown up by the increasing use of artificial intelligence, stating that “English law, as a well-developed flexible common law system, has frequently accommodated novel and disruptive technological developments and demonstrated the ability to provide certainty and predictability in the context of technological innovation”. Later in the Statement, the UKJT adds that “…moreover, the law of negligence has a track record of flexibility and an ability to adapt, incrementally, to novel factual situations. There is no conceptual reason why the law of negligence cannot be applied to harms caused by AI failures to ascertain whether and to what extent a party will be liable for those harms. In many cases, neither is there any practical difficulty in applying the normal principles in an AI context”.

With that in mind, the Statement does not propose some radical change or the need for an entirely new body of ‘AI law’. Instead, it methodically works its way through various factual scenarios considering how the law is likely to respond in line with existing legal principles. It considers, for example, the circumstances in which professionals may be liable either for using AI or for failing to use it, whether liability may attach to false statements made by an AI chatbot, and where liability is likely to fall along the AI supply chain.

As these issues cease to be hypothetical and begin to reach the courts, the jurisprudence on AI-related harms will continue to grow. Until then, the Statement represents a valuable guide to analysing AI-related harms according to first principles, and will doubtless come as a source of comfort for those who might otherwise worry that English law has no answer for novel scenarios involving AI.

To read the Statement in full, click here.